This module examines theories of nationalism (particularly modernism, perennialism and ethnosymbolist approaches to nationalism), and will enable students to independently interpet and explain the emergence of nationalism, nations, and national identity across cases in the Middle East and North Africa. While providing some theoretical orientation and critique of explanations that are either entirely reliant on the idea of the state, or approaches that emphasise pre-state identities as constitiuting bases for nationalism, the course will ultimately help students to understand the complex interplay of identities, social structures and politics in their ultimate expression as nations and nationalisms.